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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Chap. __A^_ Copyright No... 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 



COMFORT 
AND EXERCISE 



An Essay Toward 
Normal Conduct 



By MARY PERRY KING 




V£? 



Boston 

Small, Maynard & Company 

1900 



Copyright, iqoo 
Small, Maynard & Company 

(incorporated) 



*i r "• o. - Entered at Stationers* Hall HR 1 " . *• ^ % 



Library of Concrress 

Two Copi 
NOV 14 1900 

Copyright entry 

SECOND COPY 
Dcilvofod to 

ORDER DIVISION 

NOV 19 190U 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. Ox Comfort 3 

II. Comfort in Daily Life 17 

III. Comfort in Education 37 

IV. Comfort in Dress 55 

V. Educational Exercise 77 

VI. The Ideal Gymnasium 103 



ON COMFORT 



ON COMFORT 

THE world is never left long without some 
definite prompting from the informing spirit 
of beauty and truth which moulds it, without 
some fresh stir towards goodness and the libera- 
tion of the soul. 

We are reminded once more of the supreme 
importance of the spiritual life by the writing of 
that young Mystic, M. Maurice Maeterlinck, in his 
volume of essays, " The Treasure of the Humble/' 
Without trenching at all on the vexed questions 
of definite religious tenets, he is yet distinctly 
religious in tendency, since the whole gist of his 
philosophy is the constant importance of the 
human soul. He is a son of the transcendent- 
alists, of the children of wonder, and one of that 
younger school of artists who are drawing our 
thoughts once more towards the consideration of 
the deeper problems of life. 

3 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

We are ever set thinking anew on the oldest 
and most obstinate difficulty man has had to en- 
counter, — how most easily and effectually to 
realize the finest spiritual life, how to give freest 
play to ideals and make them of telling impor- 
tance in our world progress. 

In that hard task man early found himself 
the centre of opposing forces ; he had been en- 
dowed with dire and imperious bodily needs and 
with equally strong and uncompromising spiritual 
aspirations. 

He felt the tension between the beautiful un- 
moral world of Nature from which he springs, on 
which he rests, in which alone he has any being 
at all, and the perfectly moral world of finest 
spirit, towards which he strives and into which, 
he believes, his being is merged at death. 

He was confronted by the fundamental riddle 
of existence which Emerson has expressed in 
the saying, " God gives to every man the choice 

4 



ON COMFORT 



between truth and repose; take which you 
please, you can never have both." 

In this dilemma, as he came dimly to recognize 
it, man cast about for a path of escape. 

Hampered by the unrelenting demands of the 
tangle of daily existence, thwarted and restricted 
in the pursuit of a free spiritual development, his 
most obvious exit from embarrassment has often 
seemed to lie in flight from worldly liabilities. 

He might disown all those instincts and im- 
pulses which make for conquest and which are 
satisfied only in overcoming opposition. He 
might entirely renounce the pomps and vanities 
of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of 
the flesh; and so perhaps win for his spirit that 
freedom of action it desired, by shirking all 
worldly and bodily obligations. 

Such a course was evidently a begging of the 
question; it necessitated the forsaking of self-evi- 
dent duties, and could only be justified through 

5 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

vilifying those duties. It was a concession to 
spiritual nature, indeed, but it was made at the 
expense of stultifying both the mental and physi- 
cal natures, with which, after all, spirit must 
share existence at least in this vale of tears. In 
the last analysis such a process could only mean 
annihilation. 

We are here, after all, in the coil of a mundane 
environment, with pressing needs, desires, and ob- 
ligations ; and maltreat them as we may, this pa- 
tient servant, the flesh, is not to be discharged, nor 
duty to the world escaped, until the appointed time. 

Threefold as we are in make-up, with a spir- 
itual, mental, and physical nature, each more 
or less clearly defined, each equally dependent on 
the other two, and with all three blended for the 
present in the individual, it would seem almost 
self-evident that the deterioration of any one 
nature must weaken the others, and disorder the 
economy and harmony of the whole. 

6 



ON COMFORT 



The very fact that we are thus triply endowed 
for this present existence should be a sufficient 
guarantee of the equal excellence and importance 
of each endowment. 

The old Roman phrase " Mens sana in corpore 
sano " embodied a wise ideal ; and Browning has 
expressed the same fundamental truth in the 
soliloquy of Rabbi Ben Ezra, particularly in the 
stanza, 

" Let us not always Bay, 
4 Spite of this flesh to-day 

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! J 
As the bird wings and sings, 
Let us cry, ' All good things 

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now, than flesh helps 
soul.'" 

That is the just reproof to an exaggerated asceti- 
cism. It was an arrogance of soul which an- 
ciently led to the vilification of the world and 
the flesh, and it needed rebuke. 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

The successful issue of any life is just as de- 
pendent upon bodily force and world-wisdom, as 
upon spiritual quality; and the best scheme of 
culture will neglect no one of these essential con- 
stituents of human nature ; it will appreciate and 
educate the physical powers, the faculties of mind, 
and the subtle working of spirit, with equal pains, 
equal reverence, and equal zeal. 

The aim of perfection which such a culture sets 
itself can never be the cherishing of one phase of 
our nature and the desertion of the other two; 
it can never be an over development in one direc- 
tion at the cost of an under development in an- 
other ; it must always be rather the balanced 
maintenance and development of all three com- 
ponent forces, each in best condition and all at 
perfect poise. 

But we are to-day in less danger from the fallacy 
of extreme asceticism than from the opposite ex- 
treme of extravagance. 

8 



ON COMFORT 



The maintenance of any extravagance demands 
excessive strain which is not compensated by the 
result. 

The gratification derivable from extravagant ac- 
quisition, possession, or expenditure is over-alloyed 
with weariness, boredom, and disappointment. 
True luxury is attainable by moderate means, 
and vanishes with excess. 

Happiness is so delicate and evanescent a thing, 
that we are apt to miss it even at the moment of 
attainment, if it comes to us hampered by any 
unforeseen restrictions; for freedom constitutes a 
large part of our happiness; and few things so 
inevitably hamper freedom as the fever of exces- 
sive acquisition. 

. If it is plain that our enjoyment of freedom is 
complicated and restricted by over acquisitive zeal, 
it is no less evident that superfluous possessions are 
but debris of pleasure, and lavish expenditure, the 
debauchery of power. Power, pleasure, freedom, 

9 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

— these largely make up the sum of our happi- 
ness j which on all sides may find itself limited 
and defeated by a superabundance of the things 
on which we fancied it might depend. 

How then shall we adjust ourselves in order not 
to miss the finest flavor of life ? 

By determining for ourselves the exact point at 
which acquisition ceases to help our freedom ; by 
taking care that our possessions are not more than 
we can enjoy to the full ; and by guarding against 
an expenditure beyond helpfulness. 

Such an ideal recognizes no general standard of 
wealth, but a separate, relative standard for each 
member of society, according to his capacity for 
utilizing it to its utmost. The measure of that 
standard, too, need not be fixed, but shifting in 
every case with the development of new capacity 
for usefulness. And there need be no danger to 
the man nor to society from glut of power, when 
increase of wealth implies the development of com- 

10 



ON COMFORT 



mensurate helpfulness and happiness in its possessor; 
his increasing capacity for usefulness keeping pace 
with his acquisition of power ; and as he gains new 
and higher standards of happiness, he will have 
less and less tolerance of greedy acquisition or sel- 
fish accumulation. Such an ideal of living is 
nothing more nor less than legitimate comfort. 

If ascetic renunciation is a mal-adjustment of 
the individual to his environment, extravagance is 
quite as truly a mal-adjustment of environment to 
the individual. -» 

The right adjustment between self and circum- 
stance is the only real comfort ; the perfection of 
this adjustment is the only true luxury and sure 
happiness. 

This simple, normal scheme of conduct is perhaps 
the true democratic ideal, in that its standard of 
success, the measure of personal adjustment, is 
universally applicable. 

To render such a course of conduct deduci- 

ll 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

ble from existing social conditions, now so elabo- 
rately burdensome, would necessitate, of course, 
their radical simplification. And the immediate 
compensation would be a life enriched rather than 
encumbered by living, relieved of external oppres- 
sion, and freely and fully developing its inherent 
powers. 

Nothing short of a personal poise, in which the 
three elemental forces of human nature have free 
and equal play, no one being hindered by any un- 
just development, can hopefully face this ideal of 
normal comfort: an ideal whose business it is to 
encourage impulse, to educate instinct, to inspire 
action, — to develop our humanity. 

The natural development of any organism de- 
mands the adequate exercise of all its powers and 
functions, and a natural product is the only one 
that preserves the best qualities of its type. 

Human culture naturally demands equal re- 
spect for life's physical root, mental branch, and 

12 



ON COMFORT 



spiritual blossom, that the fruit may be not only 
unimpaired, but improved. 

This modest ideal of comfort in culture and 
conduct brings us face to face immediately with 
the most practical concerns. Its consistent appli- 
cation demands standards of comfort in education, 
comfort in occupation, comfort in home life, com- 
fort in social life, comfort in dress; its develop- 
ment promises universally attainable, legitimate 
human happiness. 



13 



II 

COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 



II 

COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

THE problem of comfort in daily life resolves 
itself into consideration of comfort in home 
life, comfort in occupation, and comfort in social 
life. 

In all these considerations the utmost comfort 
is again but a matter of normal adjustment. It 
consists in so adapting means to ends as to derive 
maximum result from minimum effort. 

True comfort, true luxury, true happiness de- 
pend not at all on the number of possessions, or 
the elaboration of conveniences, but rather on 
the ease with which we derive the greatest per- 
sonal gratification from the simplest extraneous 
conditions, and on the skill with which we adapt 
conditions to our personal needs and preferences, 
with the least expenditure of energy and waste 
in friction. 

2 17 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

First of all, in home life we need constantly to 
remind ourselves that the life is more than meat, 
and the body than raiment. 

It is because we forget this that we allow our 
real life to be spoiled and spent in the wear and 
tear of the mere machinery of living. We have 
elaborated and complicated our material require- 
ments and our conventional obligations beyond 
endurance, until our only hope of regaining a 
sound basis for sane living lies in simplifying and 
readjusting our social standards. And these begin 
and end in the home, however far beyond it their 
influence may extend. 

The first wrong that confronts us in search for 
the shell of a home, the four walls within which 
the home is to be created, is the silly snobbery 
which forbids persons of moderate means, yet of 
the best social standing, to live in any but expen- 
sive localities. 

The less uneasy and better bred societies of the 

18 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

Old World rarely mistake where one lives, for what 
one is. While we seem socially to care infinitely 
less for personal character and attainments than 
for fashionable residence. That accident fre- 
quently settles social status. No standard could 
be less worthy a twentieth century democracy. 
But it is part of youth's unfortunate faith in 
show, to be deluded by the glitter of material 
prosperity. 

A vicious system of land tenure has much to do 
with the difficulty of suitable housing in all of our 
large cities, and imposes a tyrannous strain on 
the home seeker. But as this essay makes no 
pretension to touch on economic questions, we 
must leave that hardship out of consideration. 
The tyranny of a mistaken sentiment remains, — 
to be obeyed by the hopelessly conventional and 
overcome by the wisely independent. 

It may be noted here that the increasing cus- 
tom of summering in the country affords opportu- 

19 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

nity for the carrying out of practicable methods 
of communistic living'; it enables people of con- 
genial tastes, with social rather than fashionable 
ambitions, yet with small means, to combine on a 
rational basis of homekeeping, which far surpasses 
complicated extravagance in the luxury of real 
comfort, with immunity from care. 

But, given the house, given the local habitation 
and the name, how best secure that airy nothing- 
ness which constitutes the essence and atmosphere 
of the home ? Mainly by carefully avoiding two 
opposite extremes. 

In the first place, the house should never be so 
elaborate as to overtax personal effort and hamper 
the personal freedom and growth of any of its 
inmates. In the second place, it should always be 
sufficiently comfortable and beautiful to furnish its 
occupants daily recuperation and encouragement. 
It should be so simple, so economically adapted 
to its inmates' means, that its maintenance shall 

20 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

always seem their lightest care ; it must be so in- 
teresting, so bountifully adapted to its inmates' 
needs, that enjoyment of it shall always foster and 
further their higher life, inviting their return to it 
daily for solace and inspiration, as well as for rest 
and food. 

Happiness derivable from a home depends upon 
the comfortable ease with which it is maintained, 
more than upon the luxury in which it is sup- 
ported. And this comfort is always relative and 
comparative, never an absolute standard. It im- 
plies that a person with most modest means may 
have a more comfortable home than his more ex- 
travagant neighbor, whose house is relatively a 
greater strain on his resources, or otherwise less 
well adapted to the tastes and idiosyncrasies of its 
occupants. 

Within a home so arranged and managed as to 
yield the greatest comfort and inspiration with the 
least worry, the characters of its inmates may 

21 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

best learn to enjoy fair freedom of relationship 
and growth. 

One of the prime requisites of happy living is 
comfort in occupation, something like a harmo- 
nious adjustment between capability and work ; 
and a great part of the complication of the vexed 
social problem, though by no means the funda- 
mental wrong, lies in the difficulty of adapting 
capacity to task, of getting the right worker in 
the right place. All the slovenly, grudging work 
of the world is due not so much to the shiftless- 
ness of unregenerate nature, as to a rebellious 
sense of outraged and baffled efficiency. 

It is true the pressure of struggle is so great, 
that few individuals have much choice of labor ; 
they are fortunate if they can find elbow room for 
any kind of usefulness, and chance to spend a pre- 
cious lifetime for the price of bread alone. 

Yet all our aspiration is not to escape toil, how- 
ever much we may delude ourselves that this is 

22 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

the goal of happiness, but only to find the field of 
activity where some native energy of ours may 
attain freedom in the accomplishment of its 
purpose. 

Activity, not inaction, is our native air ; achieve- 
ment, and not detachment, is our rest-house on the 
journey. 

Once given fit opportunity, the door of lawful 
ambition, and how naturally every power springs 
into energy! We reach efficiency almost at a 
bound, and growing exercise of congenial work 
calls forth and educates still other unguessed ap- 
titudes. We rejoice and grow apace, to the limit 
of life, undaunted and efficient to the last, nor 
ever know the tedium, the dejection, the dread of 
futility and sense of despair which attend the 
hapless, misplaced toiler at every step of the 
way. 

All this we know instinctively, and tacitly rec- 
ognize in every effort to adjust ourselves most 

23 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

comfortably to occupation ; yet it should be made 
the object of more deliberate care. The immedi- 
ate advantage, the conventional honor attaching 
to one calling above another, deserves but small 
consideration from untried youthful energy. 

The real question is not, as we are prone to 
think, which trade, which profession, is most ad- 
vantageous for advancement and profit? It is 
rather, to what calling will one's talents most truly 
answer, what sphere will they most completely 
fill? For in efficiency, in right adjustment be- 
tween work and worker, and nowhere else, is 
real good fortune to be found. 

But the old false standards obtain, and one call- 
ing is held more honorable than another ; whereas 
the most honorable calling for any being is the 
one he is fitted to serve most efficiently. Our 
wrong standard of wealth and our imperfect 
standard of education are emphasized and ag- 
gravated by a false pride in occupation. 

24 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

In enforcing many laudable ambitions of democ- 
racy, we have misconstrued some of the inevitable 
laws of nature, which is so calmly democratic in 
seeming, so ruthlessly aristocratic in fact. While 
emphasizing the essential equality of individuals, 
we have forgotten the essential equality of service. 

It is true that one man's service to the commu- 
nity may be relatively of much greater importance 
than another's ; and in that sense one man may be 
of vastly more importance than another. But in 
the finer ideal sense in which all men are equal, 
all service is of equal value, so it be the best of its 
kind. " All service ranks the same with God," as 
Browning has it. And we might with infinite 
gain revise our misleading notions of compara- 
tive dignity of occupations, and make efficiency, 
rather than worldly prominence, the test of 
success. 

We are hagridden by this false ideal of u suc- 
cess " in life, and to it alone most of our failures 

25 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

are to be attributed. We wear ourselves out in a 
fatuous attempt to reach some field of activity for 
which perhaps we have not the least fitness, but 
which stands high in fickle popular regard; and 
in that unreasoning, fashionable regard, the more 
enviable still are those who have no occupation 
at all. 

Before just respect for occupation can become 
universal, the disgrace of idleness must be gener- 
ally realized. Unfortunately we are growing away 
from such a sentiment rather than toward it. 

Not only should our popular code be revised so 
as to include the socialistic tenet of universal em- 
ployment, a task for every man and every man at 
his task ; it should encourage occupation for every 
woman as well. And this need neither enlarge 
nor restrict her sphere. She may or may not 
be married, she may or may not seek occupation 
outside of the home, but a satisfying occupation 
she should have. 

26 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

Half of the well-appointed, well-cared-for women 
in the world are perishing physically, mentally, and 
morally for want of something interesting to do, 
and do well ; while the majority of successful busi- 
ness-men whose undertaking it is to provide them 
with the raw materials of living are taxed far be- 
yond their strength. Congenially occupied women 
would need no foolish outlet for their energies, — 
in fruitless social competition, vain display, and 
idle and mischievous wastefulness. 

However exempt a woman may be from the 
necessity of occupation, she cannot be exempt 
from the duty of labor. Her true dignity can 
never be impaired by rendering service, it can only 
be endangered by rendering service inadequately. 

It is impossible for the house servant to have 
any respect for service that her mistress disdains. 

The sphere of the proper rearing of a child 
within four walls of a tenement is a sphere large 
enough for the greatest woman, if that be her 

27 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

genius. It is not the width of a sphere that 
counts, it is its height and depth. 

On the other hand, no region of activity need 
be denied to women which they can occupy in 
common with men, to the advantage of society. 
The point, however, which now needs to be em- 
phasized above all others, in the consideration of 
occupation for woman, is the equal dignity of all 
work. A practical application of this truth would 
save an embarrassing situation for many women 
who are forced to seek employment, and are pre- 
vented, by a foolish conventional estimate of differ- 
ent callings, from placing their service where it is 
most needed and would be most effectual. 

Whatever may fall within the domain of woman 
to accomplish in the future, there is one thing to 
be recognized in her immediate and hereditary 
capability ; namely, that hers is pre-eminently the 
genius of adaptation. In the art of arts, the art 
of adjustment, she is supreme. While in the region 

28 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

of creative impulse and in the region of executive 
manipulation she has always held, and will proba- 
bly long continue to hold, a place second to man's, 
in the region of adaptation she is unrivalled. Al- 
though she neither greatly originates nor controls 
forces, she most skilfully modifies and utilizes 
them. 

The fine arts themselves, in which women are 
ever outranked by men, are of little value until 
they have been utilized and adapted to daily life ; 
the practical affairs of the world, the production 
and aggregation of wealth, in which men are so 
much more efficient than most women, are of little 
value until they have been adjusted to daily use ; 
and in this dominion of spiritual utility, in this 
power of deriving actual life and helpfulness from 
the mere physical and mental elements of life pro- 
vided for her, woman is in her region of natural 
greatness. 

Failing to recognize this truth, much of her force 

29 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

is spent in vain ; too much of her energy is wasted 
in attempts against natural economy. If woman 
would unflinchingly claim the equal dignity of all 
work and the full value of her peculiar powers, her 
difficult problem would be half solved. She need 
not aspire to mediocre china-painting and music- 
teaching, if she were once assured that right dress- 
making and right cooking are more honorable and 
much more needed ; she would not waste her vital- 
ity in effort to become a second-rate lawyer, when 
she might easily become a first-rate housekeeper. 
She would hesitate to spend herself in a wasteful 
competition with man for the grosser elements of 
life, whenever it was possible for her so to supple- 
ment his endeavors as to utilize what he can better 
produce. 

It is only in utilization of man's work that 
women are indispensable; their attempts to par- 
ticipate in its production must always be strained 
and unsatisfying, while without their final adapta- 

30 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

tion of the product of his energy, man's work must 
always prove incomplete and unsatisfactory. 

There will doubtless always be some women 
constitutionally better fitted to do man's work than 
to do their own, just as there are always a few 
men with the instincts and tastes of woman and 
the capacity to do her work. These are excep- 
tions to their kind, however ; and the freest oppor- 
tunity should, undoubtedly, be afforded them for 
placing their individual energies to their most 
advantageous use. 

The recognition of woman's need for occupation, 
of the equal dignity of all occupations, and of the 
inevitable differentiation of function between men 
and women, would be radically helpful to all legiti- 
mate members of society, to all workers. 

As home life touches the field of occupation on 
one side, its interests spread out into social life on 
the other; and in that realm, too, comfort will 
depend upon adjustment. 

31 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

The amount of social life we can really enjoy 
must be regulated by our strength ; it should not 
be so great as to lessen our personal efficiency, nor 
so limited as to impoverish our growth and restrict 
our influence. Certainly we should do with as 
few artificial social obligations as possible, in 
order that intercourse may gain in the sincerity 
and simplicity of true courtesy. Our unwritten 
law of visiting, for instance, might well be revised, 
for the ordinary duty call is but a travesty of 
sociability and costs much friction and waste. And 
random entertaining, too, is quite as pernicious, 
in that it wastes our energy and dissipates our 
enthusiasm. Like the duty call, it is no real cour- 
tesy, and rarely deludes the recipient. 

The legitimate privilege of social life is to 
enhance personality, while the pernicious tendency 
of social fashion is to dissipate it. 

But the wise soul will seek adjustment to life by 
the gentlest means, maintaining a fair composure 

32 



COMFORT IN DAILY LIFE 

even in the face of exasperating circumstance, dull 
conventionality, and censorious cant, feeling sure 
that reform is too dearly purchased at the expense 
of personal poise. 



33 



Ill 

COMFORT IN EDUCATION 



Ill 

COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

IF we may say that comfortable living depends 
upon the right adjustment between ourselves 
and our circumstances, if such harmonious relation 
is the fundamental condition in which happiness 
largely resides, then certainly our training for life 
may very well have for its ideal a normal growth, 
so balanced as to result in the most perfect per- 
sonal poise, so directed as to result in the most 
perfect efficiency. 

The true end of culture is not reached when it 
has given us merely a healthy body well nurtured 
and developed, or a sound mind broadened and 
enriched with various learning, or a glad, well- 
intentioned spirit. Its object is only attained 
when it has so correlated all these forces as to 
produce in them the habit of perfect and prompt 
co-ordination. 

37 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

Nothing short of this balance of development 
can secure for us poise of character and a happy 
adjustment to life, or result in anything but dis- 
comfort, mal-development, and limited efficiency. 

Perfection of culture can never be reached 
through intellectual acquirement alone, through 
spiritual achievement alone, any more than it can 
through physical training alone. It cannot be 
reached by any two of these ways, nor even by a 
haphazard pursuit in all three directions. It must 
be attained through harmonious adjustment of all 
three forces ; allowing them to interplay and react 
naturally, freely, and fully according to their nor- 
mal interdependence ; each one cultivated with 
regard to the others, and the culture of each 
rounded and refined in turn by the culture of the 
rest. 

Furthermore, this difficult task can never be 
achieved by the acquisition of knowledge, the 
acquisition of insight, the acquisition of strength 

38 



COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

alone, but only when the character which has 
acquired them is happily occupied in making use 
of its increase of power. 

The highest, completest culture, in other words, 
can never bring happiness to its possessor until it 
is confronted with real life and given the opportu- 
nity of action, until it is put to the test in actual 
concerns of cause and effect ; not otherwise will it 
reveal to one the pleasure of a lawful and effectual 
power, unthwarted of its purpose and accomplish- 
ing its proper destiny. 

This is a reason why many college men, having 
attained a degree of intricate culture, and then be- 
ing forced by chance necessity into some very gross 
or humdrum occupation, where their special train- 
ing has no play, fall into discontent, dejection, and 
defeat. Their culture was well enough in itself, 
but it lacked the adjustability to circumstance, so 
needful for happiness. 

On the other hand, with what relish and zest 

39 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

the man who is engaged to the top of his bent will 
go about his business ; his every faculty is occu- 
pied and stimulated ; he can touch the sphere of 
his own life at every point; his culture was nei- 
ther too great nor too small ; he is in happy ad- 
justment with his surroundings. 

Just here one must note that the plea for uni- 
versal education rests on the fact that increased 
power or augmented capacity will inevitably seek 
enlarged spheres of usefulness or create them for 
themselves. But how, in the laborious process of 
education, can we justify to the spirit such unre- 
mitting toil? 

Happiness, we know, is the touchstone of cul- 
ture. And only in activity does the fully cul- 
tivated character find happiness. Indeed, so 
necessary a thing is activity, so welcome a part 
of our human birthright, that the moment we 
find a congenial occupation, some calling in which 
our powers may reach their utmost effect, that 

40 



COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

moment for us laziness vanishes and idleness is 
unknown. 

But what essential quality is there in active life 
which affords such satisfaction ? How is it that 
the spirit seems to find there its natural element ? 
Is it not that all activity is expressive; that in 
the varied activity of life the human character is 
given room and opportunity for self-expression ? 

If this be so, then expression is the missing link 
between culture and life, between the dead letter 
and the living spirit; whereupon it follows that 
education in expression is a most essential element 
of the most useful culture. 

We make constant boast of the liberal education 
offered our children. But what is a liberal educa- 
tion ? Is it not an education which liberates the 
spirit, setting the soul free from the awkwardness 
of insufficiency and the embarrassment of depen- 
dence, which gives it freedom of itself and freedom 
toward others ? And how, pray, is the soul to be 

41 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

freed from the awkward insufficiency of self, un- 
less through the avenue between the domain of 
self and others which expression provides? Or 
how, again, is the soul to be free from embarrass- 
ing dependence upon others, unless through expres- 
sion's power over others ? 

This fundamental need of freedom is at the root 
of universal hunger for expression. And the rudi- 
ments of a liberal education have not been vouch- 
safed to us until we have been helped to the 
freedom and power of adequate self-expression in 
some direction, or in as many directions as may 
be. Only a scheme of education which provides 
for this necessity can rightly be called liberal. 

This principle is recognized in the best kinder- 
garten education, but in our primary, secondary, 
and collegiate courses it is almost entirely disre- 
garded. It would seem self-evident that the arts 
of reading, writing, and talking are the rudiments of 
common education, and yet as arts they are rarely 

42 



COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

taught at all. Many a college graduate is per- 
fectly incapable of writing a lucid, forceful, grace- 
ful letter, of reading aloud effectively the simplest 
newspaper article, or of talking easily, convinc- 
ingly, and pleasingly on the most familiar 
topic. 

We neglect the power of culture to be derived 
from good talking, good writing, and good read- 
ing ; although the practice of them as arts is a 
liberal education in itself. How often we see a 
mind stored with abstruse learning, yet absolutely 
helpless, awkward, and ineffectual through lack of 
any power of expression whereby to fitly relate 
itself to the actual world ! How often we find 
persons who have given their best years to the 
laborious acquisition of knowledge, and yet after 
all are graceless, cantankerous, and unpleasant 
personalities to meet. Their culture is imperfect, 
wide and accurate though it may be, in that it 
has never been normally related to conduct, action, 

43 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

expression, to humanity; it has never been tem- 
pered and attuned by living use. 

We confer on students degrees as Masters and 
Bachelors of Arts, when in reality there is not a 
single art of which they have mastered the rudi- 
ments. The so-called arts courses in our colleges 
are in fact science courses ; the study of languages, 
of literature, of philosophy, even of the Fine Arts 
themselves, is always a scientific study of those 
subjects. The utmost erudition in art is still only 
scientific knowledge. It is only in the practice of 
any art that we can realize its power or partake 
of its influence for culture. 

This matter of education in expression is vitally 
important. It is the one thing needed to sanction 
culture, to justify its importance in human affairs. 

Yet we scoff at the teaching of expression, and 
idolize knowledge for its own sake in spite of the 
evident fact that the accumulation of unutilized 
knowledge is as dead a weight to the world and to 

44 



COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

the individual as the accumulation of unutilized 
wealth. A load of scholarship is but an encum- 
brance to the unexpressive, inactive spirit ; it is 
a mal-adjustment more uncomfortable than igno- 
rance ; it cannot even afford happiness to its pos- 
sessor, since it is not utilized to increase his power 
nor his freedom. 

It is often contended, and rightly contended, 
that special industrial training is not an essential 
part of a liberal education; that a university's 
business is to form character, rather than to fit 
for any particular calling. But ideal character- 
building should include power of adaptability as 
one of the chief factors in equipment for life, 
and such adaptability is best developed by edu- 
cating expression. 

It is true that a knowledge of modern literature 
will exert a more liberating and humanizing influ- 
ence on the mind than a knowledge of agriculture ; 
it is true that the study of the natural sciences is 

45 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

a more valuable means of culture than the study 
of engineering. But the study of engineering or 
of agriculture will have this great advantage over 
its rivals, that it not only enriches the mind by its 
own presence, but also liberates and humanizes the 
character by affording it a more immediate out- 
let in affairs, in utility. 

The real value of practical studies, as they are 
called, does not rest (where popular judgment 
would place it) in their more immediate commer- 
cial advantage : it rests in the more ready outlet 
they afford the character for making its energy 
effective through action. 

While industrial and professional schools have 
the application of their learning constantly in 
view, a general university course has in view no 
immediate application of its knowledge whatever. 
Such application and point it might furnish through 
the teaching of expression. 

The zest and savor of effort are relished only 

46 



COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

when we taste the fruit of achievement. This is 
the law of toil, the sanction under which the work 
of the world is performed. Why not, then, make 
it the law of education as well ? Why not couple 
with every educational task its natural incen- 
tive ? Should not every new acquisition of power, 
whether of knowledge, of instinct, or of skill, be 
quickly tempered by its use? Should not the 
student be granted the rightful stimulus of elation 
in his growth, which would come to him from 
day to day in realizing through expression the 
power of his acquirements? 

Our education should give us as keen pleasure at 
every step as our after life can possibly afford, in 
order that, having found continual enjoyment in 
the daily development of body, mind, and spirit, 
and their effective adjustment to affairs, we should 
insensibly come to identify happiness with work 
and growth ; we should cease to fancy that happi- 
ness is to be found in indolence and inactivity. 

47 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

Once imbued with an ideal of culture which 
seeks perfection, not in distant attainment, but in 
present personal poise and progress, we should no 
longer think of life as a toilsome journey; we 
should find ourselves every morning at the gates 
of Paradise, already in the very air of eternity. 

Culture of expression does not consist in a 
smattering of elocution, perfunctory imitation of 
gesture, or desultory dramatic training, nor in any 
merely physical gymnastic system, nor in foolish 
excesses of relaxation and abandon at the expense 
of vigor and reserve. It is the affectation of 
these things by the charlatan and the ignorant 
that brings the study of expression into disrepute. 

Real culture of expression must be based on 
serious philosophy. It includes a knowledge of 
the fundamental science of expression common to 
all the arts of which expression is the source, — a 
subject of investigation whose very existence is 
scarcely recognized. It begins by providing con- 

48 



COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

sistent training in the elementary arts of motion, 
reading, writing, and talking ; and from these as 
a foundation it should proceed, as required, to 
special training in one or more of the arts, accord- 
ing to a student's natural bent and capability. 

Its good will be at least twofold. It will be in 
itself a liberalizing, humanizing education, and it 
will at every step naturalize, facilitate, and glad- 
den the too tedious acquisition of other knowledge 
by giving it some immediate hold on actuality, 
some positive relation and concern with the econ- 
omy and joy of living. 

With such a stimulant, knowledge may be as 
easily and completely assimilated by the character 
as laborious exercise is utilized by the physical 
organism. A genuine arts course may become as 
pleasant and popular as racing or football. Ex- 
pression, moreover, is a self revelation. We only 
begin to know ourselves, our needs and powers, as 
we begin to call these into play through cultivating 
4 49 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

their expression. In expression the character's 
poverty or strength stands revealed. Brought into 
truer contact with others by means of perfected 
expression, personality will be the more readily 
inspired to endeavor, to excellence, and to the 
fullest enjoyment of its faculties. Education in 
expression, from the most practical point of view, 
would make this great advance upon our present 
system, that whereas we now tend to severe uni- 
formity of training, we should thereby provide 
greater differentiation of equipment. We should 
not send forth hundreds of differing students cast 
in a single mould, to find their places in a complex 
civilization, where scarcely two positions of useful- 
ness have the same requirements. 

By recognizing the multifarious differences in 
students and by cultivating a habit of adaptability, 
we should be fitting men and women to adjust 
themselves more readily and comfortably to the 

complexity of life awaiting them. Instead of de- 

§0 



COMFORT IN EDUCATION 

pressing genius to the level of talent, and neutral- 
izing talent to the rank of average intelligence, we 
should be stimulating average ability to the rank 
of talent, and raising talent to the level of genius. 

One of the most elemental and undeniable de- 
mands of each solitary soul is the desire for ex- 
pression. Our arts, our cities, our dress, our speech, 
our motion, our life from minute to minute, our 
civilization from age to age, are all varied forms in 
which human spirit is expressing itself. Our sole 
satisfaction in living is to find vent and scope for 
our aspirations and to embody them in expression. 

It is often said that the keenest pleasure in the 
world is that of the artist who freely expresses 
himself, and almost perfectly realizes his ideal, in 
his own creations. But the satisfaction of the 
blacksmith or the farmer, the seamstress or the 
cook, be they worthy of their hire, is of the same 
sort, and may be just as keen. It is the lawful 
complete enjoyment of a being in the natural ex- 

51 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

ercise of its functions. Its imperative craving for 
activity has been satisfied ; it has been given op- 
portunity for fit and adequate expression. None 
of us can ask for more, and no truly liberal educa- 
tion can give less. 



52 



IV 
COMFORT IN DRESS 



IV 

COMFORT IN DRESS 

WHEN we consider the intimate dependence 
of personal comfort, pleasure, and beauty 
upon clothing, and realize the hindrance that cloth- 
ing has become, its obstruction to bodily grace, 
and the excessive care it necessitates, we must 
agree that it is at best only a greater or less 
personal handicap. 

But since the conditions demanding clothing 
are unavoidable, it becomes wisdom to adjust our- 
selves to its necessities by minimizing, so far as 
practicable, our modern clothing's many disad- 
vantages. It is but reasonable to permit to the 
person and the personality their greatest freedom 
and efficiency by discomforting them as little as 
may be with the shackles of dress. 

Such emancipation is best accomplished by first 
minimizing as far as possible the actual amount 

55 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

and weight and restriction of clothing ; secondly, 
by choosing such clothing as best harmonizes with 
its surroundings ; thirdly, by clothing's best ex- 
pression of harmony between its wearer and 
environment. 

The first of these considerations, the regulation 
of the amount, weight, and restriction of clothing 
according to the requirements of climate, personal 
physique, and health, so as to secure the most per- 
fect hygienic conditions, constitutes the science of 
dress. 

The second consideration, the selection of cloth- 
ing to fit its environment, the suitability of cloth- 
ing to the occupation, to the occasion, constitutes 
the philosophy of dress. 

While the third consideration, the adjustment of 
clothing to best express the wearer in relation to 
his or her immediate surroundings, constitutes the 
art of dress. 

It must be remembered that these three divisions 

56 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

of the subject are not hard and fast, but merely 
convenient; as in most other classifications, the 
science, philosophy, and art of the subject are 
closely interrelated and interdependent. 

A just consideration of the science of clothing 
leads one to minimize its weight, amount, and 
restriction, in order that the comfort, freedom, and 
activity of the wearer may be augmented to the 
utmost, — by lessening its complication, by secur- 
ing necessary warmth and protection from lightest 
materials, by facilitating cleanliness, by avoiding 
overheating and overburdening, by imposing the 
least -artificial obstruction to the free play of the 
functions. The body may be thus enabled to act 
readily and most efficiently in every emergency; 
it may possess its normal health and strength by 
instinctive, easy exercise, and its greatest beauty of 
unimpeded motion through unimpaired mobility. 

Our present modish dress with its inflexible and 
ill-adapted forms is prohibitive of natural beauty, 

57 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

in that it makes motional grace well nigh impos- 
sible; it is a menace to health in its prevention 
of such natural, timely exercise as the body should 
secure from our necessary and incidental activity ; 
it is a serious obstruction to the most competent 
effort. In all of these respects the dress of men 
is less criminal than the dress of women, though it 
leaves a great deal to be desired. 

A most discouraging fact is, that the more 
attention we give to dress, the more elaborately 
uncomfortable it becomes; instead of progressing 
toward health and freedom and beauty, with in- 
crease of expense in dress, we chiefly multiply its 
weight and complexity and unnaturalness. Our 
dress becomes more and more an artificial, or, if 
you will, an artistic, creation in itself, with less 
and less relation to the human being, and little or 
no special relation to the individual wearer. 

This is as disastrous to true beauty as to health 
and utility. For consider in what greatest beauty 

58 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

consists; is it not very largely in the charm of 
grace? "We frequently find a face and figure, 
faultless in color and mould, yet unattractive from 
lack of spontaneity, mobility, grace. On the other 
hand, a much plainer person often has a surprising 
charm of personality ; and the explanation may be 
found in the possession of an open mind, a gentle 
spirit, and a responsive body freely co-ordinating 
in expression. 

It is not perfection of form and color alone that 
constitute the greatest human beauty ; it requires 
beauty of motion as well. And this element of 
beauty, this harmony of motion (the quality of 
grace), which has such power of charm, our present 
mode of dress entirely disregards. 

Dress based on sound scientific principles of 
clothing, on the contrary, would be as careful to 
secure the possibility of the power of beautiful 
motion, as to secure the possibility of health and 
efficiency through unrestricted muscular freedom. 

59 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

The need of a scientific readjustment of clothing 
is shown by our unwarranted fatigue from simply 
wearing our clothing, by our unnatural dislike 
of exertion, and the inconvenience of necessary 
exercise. It is largely the tyrannous oppressions 
of our dress that makes us the angular and awk- 
ward, flabby and weak, or stiff and wooden per- 
versions of humanity we have become. 

At best we are likely to be over-developed in 
some directions and under-developed in others. 
Impaired development, imperfect co-ordination, and 
spiritual deterioration are the grievous penalties we 
are paying for unnatural crimes in dress. The 
need of ready adjustment of clothing in point of 
quantity and complication is shown by the ex- 
cessive demand it makes upon our resources and 
our time. Merely to procure and maintain the 
variety of clothing that conventionality prescribes, 
entails an unwarranted degree of effort. So cum- 
brous and unaccommodating have our clothes 

60 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

become, that such motional beauty as we retain 
is obscured. 

The loveliness of natural vigor and grace in 
the human form and in human motion is vanish- 
ing from the world under the impositions of dress ; 
and the utmost artificial beauty of dress itself can 
not replace them. We have countenanced the 
development and inflictions of dress as a creative 
art entirely apart from human requirement. In- 
stead of keeping it to its imperative need of adap- 
tation, instead of artistically relating it to the best 
uses of the human being, we have vainly fancied 
that we could be most beautiful through beauty of 
a costume adapted only to a lay figure or a show- 
case. We have forgotten that the art of costume 
has, primarily, obligations of human service — not 
the freedom of studies in still-life. 

The modern lady's shoe, for example, with its 
high heel and pointed toe, considered objectively, 
merely as a piece of bric-a-brac, is more shapely 

61 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

and more pleasing, perhaps, than an equally well- 
made common-sense shoe, broad in the toe, heel- 
less, and flat of sole. But when we compare 
them as foot-gear and imagine them in use, — 
one permitting the beautiful exercise of a natural 
member, the other cramping and distorting it, — 
we shall not feel so tolerant of our conventional 
preference. 

In judging of beauty we must not be deceived 
by the superficial approval of the eye. And the 
danger of this fallacy is evident in much apparel, 
which may be comely in itself, but is little short 
of ridiculous in its relation to human or individual 
requirement. 

This matter of scientific dress is of fundamental 
importance, because of its inevitable influence on 
physical freedom and culture, and the no less 
inevitable influence of physical conditions on the 
mental and spiritual life. The warped and un- 
intelligent characters of many men and women, 

62 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

much of the inhumane pettiness, bigotry, and spite, 
are due quite as much to the incessant and tyran- 
nous irritation of clothes, as to any inherited 
depravity. 

Hour after hour, day after day, year after year 
we bear the stupid burden of an elaborately un- 
comfortable and unbeautiful system of dress. We 
permit ourselves to be hampered at every turn, 
limited in every natural expression, handicapped, 
galled, and jaded. Is it any wonder that spirits 
are distempered, minds befogged, and sense of 
fair play radically perverted ? We can no more 
have a free and wholesome character in a 
shackled, devitalized body, than we can gather 
figs of thistles. 

If every woman could stand flat on her feet, 
with her toes apart and her diaphragm free, there 
would be more gratitude and fewer murders in 
the world. 

Having thought of dress in a more or less scien- 

63 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

tific way, as it should be regulated by climatic 
and hygienic requirements, we may consider it 
from another point of view, — the relation it bears 
to the demands of environment. This is the phi- 
losophy of dress, if one may say so ; and, presup- 
posing an adequate regard of climatic hygienic 
requirements, it further considers the demands of 
the occupation in which we are to engage, the 
occasion in which we are to participate, the 
atmosphere in which we are to mingle. 

The comfortable adjustment of dress to the 
demands of occupation would ensure the more 
easy and efficient execution of work. 

Women engaged in office, in shop, or in any 
personal stress or strain cannot follow the stand- 
ards of the fashion plates, without endangering 
their health and belittling their capacity. Such 
modification of their clothing, on the other hand, 
as would permit them the maximum comfort 
and freedom at their work, would prove a double 

64 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

economy, — lessening their expenditure and in- 
creasing their capability. 

A proper adjustment of dress to the spirit of an 
occasion may have a like economic advantage, and 
may afford generous democratic standards. 

The vogue of bicycling is having a good influ- 
ence on our ideas of clothing ; not that we have 
evolved the most suitable costume for that exer- 
cise, but because it has compelled us to recognize 
the wisdom of adapting dress to occasion. In a 
gathering of bicyclists, the best-dressed rider would 
wear the most comfortable and suitable costume, 
not the most elaborate and expensive garments. 
And so, for every other occasional requirement, 
we should heed the conditions of time, and place, 
and function, more than the conventional stand- 
ards of capricious fashion. 

Not dress for the sake of dress, but for the sake 
of beauty, is the axiom of good dressing ; and per- 
fect beauty never disregards fitness. If we dressed 
5 65 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

with more regard to occasion, and less to fashion, 
we should not only be better dressed : we should 
be richer in time, and peace, and money, as well 
as in beauty. 

Unsuitable extravagance in standards of cloth- 
ing causes more unhappiness and defeat than any 
other social excess. The remedy here is not to 
neglect dress, not to cheapen nor sacrifice its 
importance, but to ensure its beauty through com- 
fort and convenience. Its happiest artistic success 
can be furthered in no other way, for beauty is the 
perfect economy of adaptation. 

Mood knows no more potent influence control- 
lable by ourselves than dress. And recognition of 
this power is a hint sufficient for the remedy of 
many an unhappy hour. ^Esthetic sensibilities 
deserve to be aided and encouraged, and the sense 
of harmony procurable from well-adapted clothing 
is a powerful reagent toward personal poise. 

Let us now suppose that dress has been arranged 

66 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

with every needful attention to hygienic and cli- 
matic requirements, for our utmost personal com- 
fort and bodily freedom and grace; that it has 
also been selected with due regard for the use to 
which it is to be put, the purpose it is to serve, 
the occasion it is to grace, and the company it is 
to keep ; there still remains its infinite variety of 
texture, design, color, form, and ornament to be 
adjusted. There remains the whole aspect of the 
problem which has to do with individual preference 
as modified by good taste, — the consideration of 
clothing as personal, human expression. This is 
the art of dress. 

The first law of the art of dress enjoins a har- 
mony between wearer and environment; it re- 
strains the vagaries of selfish caprice, not by the 
rule of a meaningless fashion, but by the generous 
law of beauty which requires the unit to be subser- 
vient to the whole. 

Good dress shuns the vulgar rivalries of personal 

67 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

display; it permits the wearer every liberty of 
taste consistent with that gentility which is never 
forgetful of others. It is fundamentally expressive 
of the individual ; but it is no less fundamentally 
careful of the objective requirements it is designed 
to fulfil. And yet in the present lamentable divorce 
of the practice of fashion from the principles of art, 
good dressing demands some courage. 

Conventional costumes of fashion being so bad 
and so popular, the simplest dress that can be 
created on sound scientific and artistic principles 
must be more or less conspicuous. And being con- 
spicuous is no desirable part of dressing well. So 
that the would-be devotee of good dress is in a 
dilemma between conformity to false standards, on 
the one hand, and oddity for the sake of truth, on 
the other. But this is no greater hardship than 
confronts other artists ; for in art it is impossible 
to be right and to be slavishly conventional at the 
same time. 

68 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

Yet there is always an escape in compromise 
for the timid who are yet not hopelessly lost. If 
they cannot brave the criticism of heelless sjxoes, 
perhaps they may have strength of mind for clean 
skirts ; if they are not equal to this heroism, per- 
haps they may have the courage to refrain from 
ridiculing those who are. 

When the meaningless uniformity and variety of 
fashion give place to a significant uniformity and 
variety, controlled by climate, occupation, and 
social utility, the art of dress will be as free to 
reach perfection of charm and helpfulness as the 
arts of music, painting, and sculpture ; and thus it 
may become quite as dignified and honorable. 

It will no longer be left to the ignorant control 
of uncultivated manufacturers and operatives; it 
will not follow blindly the mode of any alien city ; 
it will cease to be merely a trade, as it now is, and 
will become one of the fine arts, native, character- 
istic, and genuine. 

69 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

Under such conditions the demand for better 
dress by people of consistent culture would war- 
rant and necessitate a supply by people of equal 
intelligence and education. This would open a 
new and fertile field of dignified industrial art to 
thousands of cultivated workers. 

There is no lack of specialized clothing in the 
market, no lack of clothes, beautiful in themselves, 
well suited to many conditions, occupations, and 
occasions ; but the idea of so adapting dress as to 
make it expressive of personality, to make it a truly 
interpretative art, finds few exponents. Decora- 
tive art in clothing has run so far to artificiality 
as to have lost all trace of its original purpose ; 
and it has been allowed to so far artificialize 
humanity itself, that normal, natural form and 
motion, with their instincts and influences for 
beauty, are almost obsolete. 

No decoration of the human figure can compen- 
sate for its loss of the most interesting beauty of 

70 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

motion. No substitution of stiffly conventional, 
artificial shape can compensate for the loss of 
mobile beauty. 

A complex, successive motion of the freely act- 
ing human body is more beautiful than any 
restricted, specialized motion which unnatural 
clothing compels. Motion is living beauty, and 
perfection of form is potential grace. 

The beautiful woman must keep her beauty 
alive ; she must give it reinforcement of life in 
graceful motion, if she would transmit it to her 
descendants. If she allows it to fossilize, if she 
guards it with too much inactivity, it is already 
deteriorating. The woman who has beauty of 
motion, with much less beauty of form, lives nearer 
to the springs of life ; she is closer to the fountain 
head of all beauty, and her children may inherit 
the beauty of form toward which all her beautiful 
motion was ever tending. 

It is evident, then, that dress, which so closely 

71 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

influences our every movement, is of more serious 
and vital interest than is casually supposed. It 
deserves our best care from far higher motives 
than vanity. Whether we will or not, every color 
we adopt, every garment we don, reveals ourselves 
and influences our neighbor. 

As the clothing covers the person, so the person 
veils the personality, and the personality in turn 
guards the inmost character. From character, per- 
sonality, and body, through clothing, expression is 
inevitably transmitted. And if we are responsible 
for the good conduct, influence, and effect of the 
spirit's veil of flesh, which is only partly within our 
control, how much more are w r e responsible for 
a truly comely and pleasing influence through 
dress ! 

There is no business of daily life so trifling as to 
be undeserving of care ; no act so small that it is 
insignificant ; nothing that may not be made more 
beautiful in the doing. And the tine arts of living, 

72 



COMFORT IN DRESS 

of which dress is one of the most important, are 
just as eloquent, just as honorable, as any of their 
sister arts we have revered so long. Though they 
are taught in no school, written in no book; 
though we seem for the most part never to have 
appreciated their existence; yet on the arts of 
living depend our comfort, our greatest luxury, 
and our highest happiness. 



73 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

MANIFESTATION of the need of exercise 
begins with the first squirmings and push- 
ings of earliest life; it keeps up its insistent 
requirement pace for pace with all the adoles- 
cent and maturer stages of growth and develop- 
ment; and it continues to urge its claims in the 
stretchings and gapings of the centenarian. 

Love of exercise exists wherever the exercise 
essayed is really fitted to its need. This is shown 
in the crowing kicks of infancy, the glowing 
stress of youthful sports, the smiling constitu- 
tional of middle life, and the satisfying yawns 
of old age. 

Our civilization, grown so over-mentalized, so 
feverishly strenuous, so exhaustingly nervous, takes 
very little care for "motion without motive" (as 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

gymnastics have been defined); indeed it does 
not even encourage any just proportion of motion 
with motive in its fashions for work. Most work 
necessitating any fair proportion of personal motion 
is become unfashionable and unpopular. The natu- 
ral dignity and grace of active motional work are 
rusting under damps of nervous prostration, induced 
by false standards of elegance and false ambitions 
for success. 

Mind and spirit are being so unnaturally over- 
worked, to the detriment of physical energy, that 
the human type is threatened, and grows fantasti- 
cally abnormal. Specimens of well-balanced cul- 
ture are more and more rare, while hysteria, 
madness, debauchery, fruits of abnormal develop- 
ment, grow more and more common. 

The remedy for these things is not repression, 
for repression is never a reliable remedy. It may 
divert the course of action, but tendency can only 

be converted by a counter-force stronger than it- 

78 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

self. There is natural danger in "Don't," and 
natural hope in " Do something better." 

In this connection it is very needful to remem- 
ber that the human type is made up of three dis- 
tinguishable natures : a nature that feels sensations, 
or physical nature ; a nature that feels emotions, or 
spiritual or emotional nature ; and a nature that 
thinks, or mental nature. While these natures are 
distinguishable, they are, until death, inseparable, 
and are infinitely inter-relative and always interde- 
pendent. So that the utmost health, growth, and 
usefulness of any one nature depends upon their par- 
ticipation in the equal health, growth, and useful- 
ness of the other two. And the perfection of this 
inter-relation is gained by the constant instinctive, 
harmonious coactivity of all three natures. 

The coactivity of our natures has been undevel- 
oped by education because of our failure or tardi- 
ness in appreciating the inevitable importance of 
their correlation. It has been vainly supposed 

79 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

that strong thinking prevented sensation and emo- 
tion, that one who chose an intellectual ca- 
reer might safely sacrifice physical development 
and emotional experience. Mentality thus over- 
wrought, without physical refreshment or spiritual 
reinforcement, is bloodless and soulless and un- 
magnetic, and tends constantly to inanition and 
insanity. Or it has been fancied that spiritual 
development might best monopolize educational 
care ; that emotion, as the finest power, was the 
only one worth considering ; that thought and 
sensation were too hard and coarse to be allied 
with it. But such unfair emotional indulgence 
leads to hysterical distortion, inhumane bigotry, 
and a hundred sentimental follies. 

Nor is the unjust yielding to physical tryanny 
any more advantageous. Without kind and wise 
control, excessive physicality tends to the ultimate 
dissipation of force. A combination of any two of 

our natures is hardly more succesful than the usur- 

80 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

pation of one ; for here, as elsewhere, one third and 
two thirds are equally inadequate to make one 
whole. A three-legged stool is no better with two 
legs than with one, however one or both may be 
elaborated. Just so our strength and symmetry 
and usefulness are sadly crippled, if we cannot 
rely on three well-related bases of our complex na- 
ture. And as no amount of criticism can improve 
the stool's one-leggedness or two-leggedness, so no 
amount of fault-finding alone can benefit us if we 
are excessively developed in any one direction, 
whether we are excessively mentalized, or exces- 
sively physicalized, or excessively spiritualized. 
Only by supplying the lacking element in strong 
and just relations to its fellows can we re-establish 
the perfect soundness and power and beauty of the 
whole. 

For the unbalanced maturity of men and women, 
and the unbalanced developing of childhood and 
youth, the only remedy is such coactive education 
6 81 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

of body, mind, and spirit as yields at every point a 
happy, normal, personal balance of health and use- 
fulness and charm. 

Such is the ideal standard of educational exercise. 

A first requirement of educational exercise is to 
develop and supply force that is lacking, at the 
least expense to force that exists. As our present 
life overtaxes thought and feelings to the depletion 
of physical force, the first use to be made of exercise 
is to furnish abundant stimulant in the form of 
motion, to body, bone, and tissue, at the least pos- 
sible cost to mind and spirit, for the utmost general 
and well-balanced recuperation and growth of the 
whole being. This defines the best gymnasium 
exercise. 

To escape the inconveniences and hamperings of 
our usual environment, and to secure inducement 
and facility for ample, free, profitable gymnastic 
exercise, the gymnasium is necessary, — a gymna- 
sium from whose atmosphere and appointments 

82 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

shall have been eliminated all influences that re- 
press, restrict, or pervert full freedom and dignity 
of bodily activity ; all false ideas of immodesty or 
the vulgarity of motion ; all pedantic snobbery ; 
every social fad, personal vanity, or prejudice ; all 
stiff collars, tight clothing, artificial heels, and 
binding shoes, — a gymnasium whose inspiration 
is to be " sweet as only vigor can be sweet, and 
strong as only loveliness is strong." 

Unnatural living is the enemy that destroys the 
happy balance of our faculties. And our utmost 
effort to regain that power is only the instinctive 
attempt to turn from wrong-doing and its penalties, 
and go back to the mother nature for renewal of our 
rightful comfort and power and joy in living, 
which only just obedience to her laws can yield. 
To her wisdom we must go for each step of living 
progress. 

From nature we get the best first gymnastic 
standard in the yawn and stretch. It is her uni- 

83 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

versally applicable recuperative exercise, whose ef- 
ficiency and catholicity attest its good origin and 
its value. The source of this exercise is in natural 
impulse; its action is so spontaneously instinctive 
as to be automatic, and so perfectly ordered that 
its refreshing and reinforcing effect is easy and 
unfailing. 

Laws of time, force, rhythm, direction, and har- 
mony (immutable laws of matter and of growth) 
are traceable in this most successful and unpervert- 
ible natural gymnastic ; and upon these laws are 
based the various educational processes of bodily 
culture. From the yawn and stretch may be 
clearly shown the economic value of slow time, 
even un jerking action, and perfect vibratory suc- 
cession in motion. They show, too, the natural 
succession of bodily motion, which begins with the 
eye and head, extends through chest and upper 
arms, forearms and hands, to finger tips, through 
lower trunk, legs, and feet, to tips of toes. 

84 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

If it be safe to believe that nature reinforces 
growth along the same lines and processes as those 
through which growth was instituted, then we 
have evidence in this most natural recuperative 
gymnastic of the laws and processes of human 
growth. And it is in full and perfect accordance 
with these laws and processes that true educa- 
tional gymnastic work must proceed. The value 
of slow time in motion as indicated in the stretch 
was appreciated and inculcated as the strongest 
merit in the Ling gymnastic svsteni. This was 
a great advance over other systems, with their 
hurried time and artificial rhythni, quick count 
or ill-adapted music. 

The even, self -controlled, unjerking action of the 
yawn and stretch is not sufficiently preserved in 
gymnastic practice, yet it belongs properly in ail 
motion culture. The perfect rhythm of movement 
controlled by the length and weight of bone and 
muscle in each individual — head, back, arm, 

So 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

hand, finger, leg, foot, and toe — is a sadly neg- 
lected law of economic motion. 

Nothing but military discipline can profit by the 
wholesale sacrifice of personal rhythm which mili- 
tary gymnastics exact. For any other than mili- 
tary uses the jerky automaton-like obedience to 
sudden orders would not compensate for the ner- 
vous shock and waste of energy, for the wreck of 
harmony and grace, which every startled jerk 
necessitates. Even the cherished heel-thumping 
violence of military marching is of little use when 
put to the test of trying service, and a greater 
freedom of step has always to be permitted upon 
any long march. The shortcoming of the whole 
military idea of motional training was demonstrated 
in the Boer War, where a handful of self-reliant 
men, accustomed to individual action, were always 
found a match for many times their number of 
regular troops trained in a rigid averaging system. 
The British colonial troops were found invaluable 

86 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

for precisely the same reason : they used their heads 
as well as their bodies. And this must always be so. 
An automaton can never equal a man. That is the 
gist of the whole matter. The aim of the old mili- 
tary idea is to reduce a body of men to the pre- 
cision and regularity of machines ; the aim of 
education is to elevate men above the level of 
mechanical routine, to set them on their feet with 
wisdom of head and heart, to make them free, 
spirited, and thinking individuals. Between the 
two ideals there can be no comparison and no 
compromise. 

If we are to participate in military or prison life, 
we may have to learn to march ; but that unbeau- 
tiful accomplishment can readily be acquired at 
need. So there seems to be nothing to justify the 
destruction of individual rhythm in walking, by 
forcing upon it wrong adjustment of weight and 
step, and arbitrary average of time and rhythm. 
Marching is the embodied violation of every 

87 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

true principle of mental, moral, and physical 
education. 

The laws of vibration and rhythm are essential 
and indispensable to the perfect economy of any 
and all motion. 

The full, free, natural order of human motion is 
not an arbitrary arrangement. It is but another 
instance of that natural law which transmits motion 
from the motive power, first through the nearest 
related matter, and on from that in orderly suc- 
cession through the farther and farthest related 
points that the initial force of vibration is sufficient 
to reach. 

An interrupted or restricted motion is a waste- 
ful, disordering repression of instinctive rhythm. 
Motive power that signals from the eye along the 
neck and shoulder to lift an arm, wants the upper 
arm's share of lift first, then the forearm's, and 
then the share of hand and fingers. In such a 
progression of motion the initial power is fully util- 

88 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

ized in orderly natural succession, to the satisfaction 
of the impulse and the perfection of the action's 
expression of that impulse. To overact the upper 
arm and cut short the motion of forearm and 
hand is to stultify the impulse and blight the 
action. To underact the upper arm and overact 
forearm or hand is to impoverish the action and 
destroy the magnetism of the impulse. No in- 
terference with the lawful perfection of motion, 
from impulse to its farthest vibration, is good 
motional training. And yet how little motional 
training or motional practice we get without such 
disorganizing interruption ! The unfailing recup- 
erative success of orderly procedure in motion, 
as exemplified in the yawn and stretch, is an 
intimation of the value of such order in all exer- 
cise for physical growth. By careful observation 
and experiment Delsarte discovered that the same 
orderly procedure of motion in physical exer- 
cise promoted mental and spiritual recuperation 

89 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

as well j that it undoubtedly exemplified laws and 
processes of mental and spiritual growth ; and that, 
therefore, these laws and processes of exercise 
were safe rules of exercise for the threefold edu- 
cation and correlation necessary to the develop- 
ment of personal balance and personal expression. 
There is a reactive, reflex stimulation toward 
growth of thought, feeling, and impulse from any 
proper quantity and quality of motion and speech 
(which is itself, of course, a form of exercise). And 
this stimulation completes the recuperative circuit 
from instinctive need, through fitting exertion and 
relief, back with accumulated reinforcement to 
body, mind, and spirit. I am weary ; I stretch ; I 
am refreshed. Such education of instinct as will 
lead body to educate being must needs be more 
than a fad or a fashion; it must be the science, 
philosophy, and art of exercise, — the culture of 
motion. It must be the safeguard whereby being 
may be protected from ugly and unlawful motion, 

90 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

with its inevitably harmful influence upon charac- 
ter and conduct, and may be given the aid of natu- 
ral lawful grace to further its development. 

For all motion has an inevitable creative or de- 
veloping influence for good or ill, in its reaction, 
upon the mental and moral natures, as well as a 
direct effect, helpful or harmful, upon physical 
growth and the forming of habits of physical 
conduct. Every motion, therefore, must be dis- 
cordantly destructive or harmoniously construc- 
tive to the health and power and beauty of human 
living ; and motion culture becomes a fundamental 
common-sense precaution against ill health and an 
obviously practical educational measure. Athletic 
training too often aims at excessive and uneven 
muscle building, for the mere purpose of violent 
spasmodic exertion or endurance, or for unnatural 
increase or reduction of bulk, at a reckless cost to 
vital energy, to legitimate usefulness, and to har- 
mony of vigor. Such ruthless destruction of per- 

91 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

sonal economy and normal development has no 
lawful relation to any educational process. 

Such methods of physical training, moreover, 
often miss their mark simply by being entirely 
uncorrelated to the mental and spiritual forces. 
The hardest hitter is often beaten by the lighter 
hitter with the stronger judgment. The skilled 
athlete often yields most quickly when his vital 
energy is taxed by disease. A well-balanced har- 
mony of strength with judgment and courage is a 
greater power than any mere violent physical force 
or turbulent haste ; and will safely gain, hold, and 
promote the best normal perfection of form and 
vitality, if it be allowed due time and fair play. 

And yet exercises that overtrain for mere 
strength, at the sacrifice of time and grace, are 
only more dangerous, but no more inharmonious, 
than those that overtrain for time alone, such as 
marching, thrusting, striding, and dancing to arbi- 
trary note, vocal or instrumental ; nor are they any 

92 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

worse than others that overtrain for grace alone, 
— the foolish posturing and aimless attitudinizing 
which too often take the name of Delsarte in vain. 

Grace is a quality as complex as it is fine and 
strong. It means such delicate, accurate power of 
balance as gives sure, free strength in equilibrium ; 
it means such true adjustment of the intricate re- 
lations of our three natures as secures a perfect 
rhythm in their operation ; it means such beautiful 
shaping and directing of motion as harmonizes 
force and rhythm with beauty to their fullest use. 
Such grace is the touchstone of all sound, beauti- 
ful gymnastic training. 

The shortcomings of all bad systems of exer- 
cise may be summed up in one word : they are 
inartistic. 

Now nature, on the other hand, is never inar- 
tistic in this way; her methods of growth have 
always the inevitable ease, power, and complete 
adequacy of perfect art. So, too, the only teaching 

93 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

worthy of consideration must be artistic. Time 
and energy spent on disordered inartistic exercise 
are as disastrously wasted as when they are spent 
in practising music incorrectly, or in painting by 
palpably incorrect methods. Not only is good 
work being thereby prevented, but wrong habits 
of work are being formed. And the longer we 
persist in our bad habits the worse we become, of 
course. But if repetition establishes bad habits, 
it also establishes good ones; and habits suffi- 
ciently well established become automatic, — not 
only mechanically automatic, but by their reflex 
action instinctively automatic as well; they be- 
come " second nature," as we say. And second 
nature need never be inferior to first nature ; while 
it always possesses the advantage of greater adapt- 
ability. Thus by creating habits we can change 
our conduct, our character, our nature. Herein 
lies the responsibility and range of opportunity of 
gymnastic training. 

94 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

Fortunately a good habit on natural structural 
lines of growth is more easily formed than a bad 
one. Surely, then, no preventable forming of bad 
habits should be permitted, either under cloak of ig- 
norance or indolence, or false gymnastic standards. 
The opportunity for pleasantly educating one's 
own natural impulse towards normal living and 
harmonious personal growth is too great a boon 
to be forfeited lightly. Mrs. Richard Hovey, writr 
ing upon this point, asserts that " a rigid, motional 
prison discipline would reform the criminals." 

Bad habits of being and of doing are contracted 
through ill health, ill temper, and bad judgment, — 
through imitation and inheritance. It is the busi- 
ness of educational gymnastic training to eliminate 
these bad traits from the character, and conduct, 
by the method of substitution, — by replacing them 
with right motional habits and their right tempera- 
mental reactions. Inasmuch as the physical nature 
is fundamental to the mental and moral natures, 

95 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

and the laws of the body inclusive of the laws of 
mind and spirit, it follows that the development of 
mind and spirit cannot but be controlled by the 
capacity and development of the body; and the 
symmetry and consistency of mental and moral at- 
tainment must be proportionate to the developed 
power of their physical foundation. There can be 
no sacrifice of balance in development without a 
corresponding sacrifice of power ; there can be no 
sacrifice of power without its blight upon charac- 
ter, instinct, and personality. 

Educational gymnastic training, while promot- 
ing growth and use of physical powers, should 
select only such means to this end as harmoniously 
educate lawful habits of motion and ennobling 
reaction upon the mental and spiritual natures. 
Such a standard transforms gymnastic work from 
mere physical exercise and amusement into an 
art, — an art whose processes not only utilize 
habits of doing well all the ordinary acts of daily 

96 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

life, but also induce habits of strongest and sub- 
tlest expressive power, and foster growth of mind 
and spirit as well as of body. 

The best body training is that which induces 
mind and spirit to keep even pace with bodily 
culture. Such exercise must be progressive, co- 
herent, and harmonious throughout all of its 
adjustment, so that no step need be wasted, but 
that all gain shall be valuable enrichment of gen- 
eral balanced growth. 

The yawn and stretch are the safest and surest 
initial studies in motion harmony. They con- 
stitute a model of perfectly harmless and perfectly 
helpful physical gymnastic, starting from physical 
impulse, never rising higher than its physical 
source, and therefore by no means fulfilling the 
requisite range of requirement for educational 
gymnastic ; but the principles and processes of the 
yawn and stretch extend through an infinite vari- 
ety of exercise progressing consistently from this 
7 97 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

beginning to exercise whose action, expression, and 
reaction grow more and more complex and inter- 
esting, — more and more beautiful and ennobling 
as well as strengthening. 

Instinctive, rational, or artistic progression in 
training does not lead to unusual stamping and 
striding, nor to useless jerking and shouting, but 
to the necessary activities of living, — to right 
standing, sitting, rising, reaching, lifting, walk- 
ing, breathing, talking, bending, bowing, running, 
jumping, dancing, climbing, swimming, — each in 
perfect individual rhythm, in orderly succession, 
and true harmony of motion. 

The development of this exercise is incredibly 
hastened and aided by its constant practice in daily 
use ; and all necessary activity of conduct is rapidly 
made appreciably more easy, more serviceable and 
pleasurable, by the recuperative, inspiring reaction 
of its harmonious execution. The next step in 
motion culture, beside and beyond this very practi- 

98 



EDUCATIONAL EXERCISE 

cal training, is the practice of motion whose reac- 
tion is so harmoniously and helpfully stimulating of 
thought and emotion, that the truest, highest, fullest 
use of instinct and character are being educated. 

In this way the sphere of instinctive action may 
be so enlarged as to safely and efficiently relieve 
the overworked brain. And the great natural 
force of impulse may be automatically and wisely 
converted into action of highest efficiency, without 
waste of will, and with normal increase of power 
to body, mind, and spirit. 

Such natural, symmetrical development of body, 
instinct, conduct, and character, through culture of 
bodily motion and speech, is the surest foundation 
for all artistic expression and the legitimate work 
of educational gymnastics. 



99 
Lift 



VI 
THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 



VI 
THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

THE standard is not too high, nor the require- 
ment exaggerated, that demands that " ca- 
pable teachers in an ideal gymnasium must be well 
versed in physiology, psychology, and pedagogy ; 
must know something of human kind, its powers and 
means of growth, and of the world and what kind 
of men and women it needs ; they must be able to 
develop mental, moral, and physical alike, till each 
nature acts as stimulant and counterbalance for 
the others; they must know the laws of motion 
and expression and their methods, whereby even 
the exceptional and inexplicable which we call 
genius may be educated." 

With such a standard the gymnasium stands 
high and strong and attractive among the educa- 
tional institutions of the world ; with any lowering 

103 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

of its standard it drops to the ranks of sensation- 
alism and charlatanry. 

The first problem that confronts a teacher of 
gymnastics is the adjustment of environment to 
the work, — the selection and arrangement of a 
gymnasium whose cleanly convenience and attrac- 
tiveness shall be of a kind that is inspiring and 
educating to sense and thought and feeling. The 
importance of immaculate cleanliness should not 
need to be emphasized in these days when sanitary 
safety is very generally appreciated ; now, too, the 
convenience of gymnasium appointment is luxuri- 
ously provided with abundant, interesting, well- 
arranged apparatus and alluring baths. The 
aesthetic equipment, however, of an educational 
gymnasium is as important as any other element 
of the problem. An unlovely environment is a 
discouraging field for the culture of an instinct 
for beauty ; while aesthetic stimulation from har- 
monious environment is an immeasurable help to 

104 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

teachers and students alike. A harmonious ap- 
pointment of the gymnasium cannot include exces- 
sive ornamentation, cumbersome decoration, nor 
extravagant furnishing; but it should include 
good color, sweet sound, and beautiful shapes 
in its equipment and arrangement, perfectly con- 
sistent with serviceability. 

No unmusical sound, no discordant speech, no 
unfair conduct nor unloving spirit has any legiti- 
mate place in the ideal gymnasium. The har- 
mony of the ideal gymnasium demands of its work- 
ers that they be free, unabashed, and aspiring in 
comfortable, unrestricting clothing as beautiful and 
convenient as may be. In such an atmosphere 
there is nothing to repel, and everything to induce, 
the fullest development of everybody's best quantity 
and quality of being. 

Primary educational gymnastic training begins its 
normalizing process by starting its collarless, sleeve- 
less, beltless, garterless, barefoot workers at yawn- 

105 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

ing and stretching in normal time and order of 
motion, — slowly rolling eyeballs, stretching lids, 
dropping jaw, stretching neck, raising chest and 
shoulders, with stretching arms and hands to 
finger tips, lifting ribs with stretching intercostal, 
abdominal, and back muscles, for deep breathing, 
and the stretching of legs and feet to ends of toes. 

All motion of the highest order begins with a 
spiritual, mental, physical impulse, expressed first in 
the spiritual-mental organ nearest consciousness, 
the eye, and thence transmitted to head, chest, 
arms, and lower body. 

All motion contrary to or disarranged from this 
order is inferior expression, however intricate or 
mobile its mechanism may be. Wherefore all 
educational motion practice should respect this 
highest natural order of motional succession. 

The yawn and stretch may be practised prone, 
sitting, and standing, stopping at the full relaxa- 
tion point for practice in resting in perfect relaxa- 

106 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

tion, and with gradual orderly recovery to full 
normal alertness. Thence normal standing and 
sitting poise are readily evolved with the same 
easy economic processes of moving from prone to 
sitting, from sitting to standing, from standing to 
sitting and lying down; and as these processes 
become approved and acquired by muscles and by 
instinct, their use is everywhere and always sub- 
stituted for the old disorderly habits of doing such 
things. 

In such primary processes the muscles of the en- 
tire body have been successively and rhythmically 
stretched in perfect individual harmony ; oxygena- 
tion has been increased and utilized, through the 
accelerated circulation, for the recuperative stimu- 
lation of muscles, nerves, and brain. The habit of 
getting and holding instinctive relaxation as it 
is needed is one of nature's most valuable safe- 
guards. It is often our only defence against over- 
powering circumstance. Its help, moreover, is not 

107 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

only a negative one of evasion ; it also brings a 
very prompt and efficient reinforcement, through 
such subtle automatic forces that we can only 
know its magic by experience and through abso- 
lute effacement of self-will. Then the great 
powers of being work on unhindered by indi- 
vidual interruptions, pushing safely and surely 
back from whatever excess of excitement or ex- 
haustion to normal poise and power. 

Accompanying these fundamental beginnings are 
special breathing exercises, giving the use of the 
muscularly lifted chest, extended ribs, and abdom- 
inal and diaphragm action; exercises of relaxing 
and tonic influence upon the throat ; exercises in 
tone production, from its diaphragm impulse, 
through a resonant chest cavity and unobstruct- 
ing, unirritating throat and mouth, to its resonance 
and shaping in the front of the mouth and nose, 
for an ultimate musical purity and beauty of 

quality. 

108 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

Gymnastic education which does not include 
speech training neglects one of the most important 
motional elements of bodily culture and personal 
expression. The physical wear and tear of throats 
by their misuse in speech ; the rarity of pleasant 
speaking voices, and prevalence of high-pitched 
nervous tone with rough, thin, jagged tone qual- 
ity ; the average irregularity, slovenliness, and 
crudity of enuciation and articulation ; and the 
total ignorance of the subtle values of emphasis 
and inflection, — are glaring reproaches to Ameri- 
can education, and undeniable blemishes upon any 
standard of personal culture. 

The use of tone is one of the most potent ele- 
ments in personal harmony, and its misuse always 
an element of discord, which is consciously or 
unconsciously irritating and demoralizing to the 
nervous poise of all who come within its range. 
The wearying annoyance and spiritual discourage- 
ment of bad tone can best be appreciated by re- 

109 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

calling the grateful sense of nervous relief derived 
from clean, clear, melodious diction. The most 
successful tone production is achieved, not by the 
French or clavicular breathing method, but by a 
combination of the German or abdominal method, 
and the Italian or lateral method. 

The most suggestive illustration for best breath- 
ing is that which likens the breathing cavity to 
a rubber carafe. By pressure upon the neck or 
throat emission is checked ; by pressure upon the 
top wall of the carafe (on the chest, that is) the 
contents is forced out in a small jet whose contin- 
uance is dependent upon the depressibility of the top 
wall only ; by pressure upon the side walls of the 
carafe (or intercostal muscles) only so much is 
forced out as the side pressure alone can compel ; 
while by exclusive pressure upon the bottom wall 
(or diaphragm) the contents is overforced in gulps 
from the mouth of the carafe. But by an even 
successive pressure, beginning with the diaphragm 

110 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

(or bottom wall of the carafe) , and continued by 
the intercostal muscles (or side walls of the carafe), 
a thorough circulation of the breath, with its full- 
est potentiality, is secured. This method of 
breathing not only results in completely chang- 
ing the air in the lungs, refreshing to the lowest 
depths of the breathing capacity : it gives control 
of the force of the entire supply of breath for tone 
production throughout the well-expanded resonant 
cavity of the chest, and the firmly distended 
throat and nose, and its final placing and shaping 
by the mouth for speech or song. 

The most accurate help toward the best shaping 
of tone into clear vowel and consonant sounds by 
the vocal organs has been furnished by Dr. Mel- 
ville Bell, whose analysis of mouth positions for 
visible speech offer invaluable suggestions for 
gymnastics of breathing, throat relaxing, and 
proper positions of the tongue, lips, and jaw for 
clear enunciation. The most scientific classifica- 

lll 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

tion of natural laws of emphasis and inflection has 
been given by Delsarte. 

The importance of proper breathing (and good 
diction is a constant gymnastic in proper breath- 
ing) cannot be over-estimated. Control of the 
breath is the secret of magnetic speech. 

Habits of ample oxygenation are absolutely 
essential to healthful exercise. An abundant 
supply of oxygen is required to reinforce energy, 
to invigorate circulation, and stimulate excretion 
of the waste matter which becomes devitalized 
and should be promptly replaced by abundant new 
material. Exercise without adequate oxygenation 
may readily work serious injury from the poison- 
ous accumulation of waste that is not safely dis- 
posed of. Fresh air and water are the natural 
preventives of such stagnation and corruption, — 
enough water internally to flush and refresh the 
excretory organs, and enough externally to dilate, 
cleanse, and sweeten the pores and surface of the 

112 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

skin and to stimulate its proper action. In a 
body thus wholesomely eliminating its waste and 
re-creating itself, the germs of disease find little 
room to lodge. Only that body whose harmoni- 
ous use is scientifically and artistically ordered 
throughout all of its functions and relations can 
realize the ideal of a normally cultured human 
being. 

The work of the ideal gymnasium, for conveni- 
ence and for the sake of clearness, may be divided 
into three parts : (1) The exercise of energy against 
resistance, or apparatus work; (2) the exercise of 
energy from impulse alone for cultivating the 
power of control, or free gymnastic work ; and (3) 
the exercise of energy in expression, exemplified 
and trained by practice in diction and expressive 
motion. And all of these elements of training 
must be equally considered and adequately re- 
lated; no one fostered at the expense of the 
others. All apparatus work must be done with 
8 113 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

the ease and grace and rhythm that free gymnas- 
tics inculcate ; all free gymnastic work must be 
performed with the thorough breathing that good 
diction demands ; and all reading and speaking 
must be carried on in those positions, sitting or 
standing, which the ordered use of the body in free 
gymnastics cannot fail to teach. 

In apparatus work, the " intercostal machine " 
may be employed to exercise the pulling strength 
of the entire muscular system, from the soles of the 
feet to the head and hands, evenly developing 
muscular tissue, with its general tonic reaction. 

The " chest weights " may serve to exercise or- 
derly rhythmical well-related arm-pulling, mobil- 
izing and controlling shoulder and arm joints, 
stretching and developing chest, shoulder, neck, 
back, abdominal, and leg muscles ; they may also 
be used for muscularly lifting the chest, and for 
the inspiring reaction upon body, mind, and spirit 
which the uplifted chest produces, 

114 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

The "leg weights" may be made to exercise 
the pulling strength of the leg in rhythmical or- 
derly succession and full relation of motion, for 
increase of physical balance with its tonic effect of 
stability upon the nervous system. 

The " head weights " may be used to develop 
muscular beauty of the throat, through exercising 
the strength and rhythmical control of neck motion, 
by means of very slow pulls, forward, backward, 
and sidewise, with their successive body relations, 
for strength and ease and dignity of head carriage, 
with its consequent control of muscular and nervous 
activity. 

The Swedish " stall bars " and " bom " may be 
very interestingly and pleasantly used for both 
simple and complex hanging stretches and lifting, 
with their exhilarating and tonic effect. 

Throughout apparatus work deeper and better 
controlled breathing should be developed; all 
standing and sitting positions should be in perfect 

115 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

poise; all motion should be conducted in natural 
order of succession and time, and in full harmony 
of bodily relation to various resistance. Thus mus- 
cular development is not merely being secured : it 
is being secured in ways that are forming habits 
of economically relating power to resistance, that 
is to say, in ways that are teaching natural, happy 
economy in work. 

Along with exercise of energy against resistance, 
for the development of compelling power, belongs 
the instinctive exercise of energy from impulse, for 
the development of power of control. This may be 
given through "free gymnastic" exercise, always 
consistent with the law and order of the yawn and 
stretch, however far they may progress in com- 
plexity of origin or import. No violence, no 
jerky gyrations tending to wasteful meaning- 
less or undesirable habits of motion, belong in 
any code of educational gymnastics. No pallia- 
tive of sharp counting or over-emphasized musi- 

116 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

cal accompaniment can excuse injuries of wrong 
rhythm, wrong relation, wrong meaning, and per- 
sonal discord. Free gymnastics to be of educational 
value must proceed from impulse, simple or com- 
plex, in natural order, in rhythm and shape nat- 
urally determined for each individual by the length 
and weight of bone and muscle, and the quantity 
and quality of impulse power. Such exercise 
should progress from gymnastics of simple origin, 
mechanism, and reaction, to gymnastics that gain 
interest and beauty as they grow more complex in 
their mechanism, origin, and influence. 

Primary among these free gymnastic exercises 
are: Swaying, balancing, and turning, with the 
weight well poised over the balls of the feet, with 
toes spread and heels raised ; successive undulation 
of the body from head to foot, in varying degrees 
of force and time ; successive lift, fall, and sway of 
arms and hands from eye to finger-tip, in vary- 
ing force, time, and shape of motion ; swing, lift, 

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COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

and fall of the leg in orderly succession from eye 
to toe-tips ; then mobilizing rollings and shakings 
of head, trunk, arms, hands, legs, and feet ; slow, 
orderly, rhythmical bendings, twistings, and deep 
breathing, with their perfect stretching of muscles, 
re-enforcing of circulation, strengthening of bal- 
ance, and steadying of nerves, — relieving the 
brain of congestion and discord. 

For a general tonic influence on personal energy, 
personal accuracy, and economy of power, there 
are successive slow stretchings and strong fling- 
ings of the arms in all directions (with deep in- 
halation, steady retention and control of the breath, 
and even economical exhalation), and the orderly 
elastic, unjarring jump, with its stirring refresh- 
ment and culture of prompt poise. 

The next step in advance leads to exercises more 
complicated in impulse, in the elements employed, 
in directions and relations of motion, and in reflex 
influence, as, for instance, successive upstretching 

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THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

of eyes, head, chest, arms, intercostal muscles, legs, 
and feet, with deep, slow inhalation continued 
throughout the upstretch, followed by even, slow 
successive relaxation from the stretch, accompanied 
by a controlled exhalation. By this means the 
muscular, respiratory, and circulatory systems are 
exercised, while uplifting and sustaining power of 
impulse and control are being stimulated, and a 
habit of orderly economic relaxation of tension is 
being developed. Complications of standing firmly 
in poise, with the weight over the balls of the feet, 
with orderly parallel or opposite trunk and head 
twisting, with arm stretchings in various direc- 
tions, serve harmoniously for strengthening mus- 
cles, control of balance, and economy of energy. 
Body bending (either slowly under control or re- 
laxed and less slowly), with successive arm stretch- 
ings and kneeling, may be used for developing 
control of instinctive surety of relation and bal- 
ance. All these, in short, are exercises which tend 

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COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

to perfect co-ordination, and the harmonious re- 
action of perfect co-ordination upon growth. 

Relating all gymnastic work to necessary activi- 
ties, there should be perfectly ordered exercises in 
walking, running, bowing, jumping, climbing, lift- 
ing, swimming, rowing, dancing, and talking. The 
evolution and cultivation of normal walking in- 
volves much valuable education. The elements 
necessary to a fine walk and good carriage are 
not carelessly acquired, and they can only become 
instinctive and habitual through wise exercise in 
many directions. 

A shifting, swerving eye must learn an accurate 
firm regard before it can lead fine bodily carriage ; 
and its education will have taught considerable 
nervous control, mental exactness, and emotional 
composure before steady, intelligent, initiative use 
of the eyes becomes an instinctive habit. 

The sensitive free guiding of a well-poised head, 
moving in well-ordered time, does not become ha- 

120 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

bitual without exerting its reactive influence for 
dignity and truth and moderation, in thought and 
feeling as well as in action. The uplifted well- 
poised chest, with its command over relaxed arms 
and hands, and its inducement to full, deep breath- 
ing, never fails to reinforce courage, charity, and 
the ease that is elegance. Rightly used hips, that 
subordinate the prominence of abdominal physical- 
ity and hold the upper emotional and mental realms 
of the body in leading poise, teach further subor- 
dination, substitution, and adaptation of values and 
relations of mental and spiritual activities. The 
mobile undulating back, the free, strong leg, and 
the straight, firm springing tread, do not impart 
their power of elasticity and balance to the body 
without developing elasticity and balance in all its 
super-physical relations as well. 

Perhaps nothing more often debases personal 
charm than bad habits in the use of the feet, — 
defiant stamping, vulgar striding, slovenly shuffling, 

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COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

silly wriggling, cowardly slinking, or other degen- 
erate forms of bad carriage. No essential of edu- 
cation is so generally unperfected, thwarted, and 
degraded as fundamental education in normal 
walking. 

Universal injustice to feet and walk begins by 
overheating and confining the feet in infancy. As 
a child grows, its feet are more and more restricted, 
in development and in use, by shoes that are too 
stiff of sole, too narrow of tread, to allow the nor- 
mal spread of the toes and ball of the foot under 
the weight of the body, and too confining of instep 
and ankle to permit their adequate development and 
use ; and all this perversion to no better purpose 
than conforming the foot to a popular, wholly arti- 
ficial, standard of shape, at the expense of natural 
growth, natural right, and natural consequences. 
Add to this the false shame of bare feet, the mis- 
taken pride of small feet, the inartistic tolerance 
of misshapen feet, the enervating, irritating fear of 

122 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

cool feet, the undignified endurance of uncomfort- 
able, weakened, and diseased feet, and the expense 
of wearing light, soft, well-adapted shoes; and 
upon this cruelly wrong foundation walking must 
be begim. If the child rebels, or totters and falls, 
it is punished and kept at it ; if it cringes and 
halts, it is ridiculed and reproved; perhaps it is 
taught to stamp its defiance in marching, or to 
mince and prance in unnatural dancing capers ; 
and from this laborious corruption of natural 
beginnings the prevalence of ugly, weak, foolish, 
inharmonious carriage is not strange. The won- 
der of it all is our toleration of the barbarity, 
with its radical, far-reaching, inevitable ill effects 
upon the health, the ability, and the grace of 
women and the children they bear. 

A gymnasium shoe, to serve in processes of 
normal development, where the use of bare feet 
is impractical, should be a " bare-foot shoe," a shoe 
very light and soft throughout, with the least upper 

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COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

necessary to hold the sole in place and to hold 
firmly through the heel and waist of the foot, 
across the instep ; and permitting thorough ven- 
tilation and perfect freedom of play to the muscles 
of the ankle, instep, ball of foot, and toes. The 
light, flexible sole should conform accurately to the 
size and shape of the sole of the bare foot when 
sustaining the body's full weight upon its well- 
spread ball and toes ; its width and shape should 
encourage the normal, straight lying great toe, the 
spread and free separation of small toes with plenty 
of room at the side for the normal development 
and use of the almost obsolete little toe ; all back 
of the ball of the foot, through the centre sole, 
instep, and heel, the shoe should fit as snugly as 
is comfortable when fastened and held close to 
the foot. There should be no artificial heel of 
any kind, no slightest deviation in thickness of 
sole. 

The straight lying of the great toe and the 

124 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 



straight tread necessary to save time and energy 
usually lost in turning out the toes, are best se- 
cured not by excessively incurved shoes, but by 
rational use of the foot in walking. A process in 
which one foot treads to the right and one to the 
left to carry the body straight forward is obviously 
wasteful and disordering. The false precept, " heels 
together, feet at right angles," and heel emphasis 
in marching, walking, and standing, are directly 
productive of " knock knees," of waddling, of insta- 
bility, and of other indirect ills plainly traceable to 
this source. The naturally expeditious, economic 
tread is obviously straight in the direction to be 
travelled, and yet its corruption has been elabo- 
rately taught and practised for years. The body's 
contact with floor or earth through an unyielding 
artificial heel, made over-prominent in position, 
and given still more prominence by the maladjust- 
ment of the body's weight upon it, produces a dis- 
orderly concussion that scatters irritating discord 

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COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

through the entire being. The wrong carrying of 
the weight and balance upon the heels induces the 
disordered throwing back of the knee joints, the 
straining of the pedal arch known as flat-foot ; it 
necessitates throwing the whole body out of nor- 
mal poise, and is an insurmountable obstacle to 
good walking and fine carriage. 

Hardly have feet been thoroughly conformed to 
the unnatural shapes and uses of artificially con- 
trived shoes, before the bodily disorder begins to 
spread. Upon a conventionalized base of support, 
with all of its dependent motion impaired and 
perverted, the standard of natural beauty and 
comfort for the superstructure of the body begins 
to deteriorate. If beauty of motion is spoiled at 
the foot for the caprice of an idle fashion, the 
only compensation is to satisfy the utmost demand 
of that standard throughout the body ; so the evil 
spreads toward general artificiality, degradation of 
type, and personal defeat. To restrict or weaken 

126 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

the motion of the intercostal muscular region by 
tight or stiff clothing breaks the continuity of 
strength and order and beauty of motion waves 
that should flow unbrokenly from head to feet, 
and back from feet to head and hands. When 
this natural harmony is interrupted, the normal 
strength and grace of the body are destroyed ; and 
no mincing or posturing, wriggling of hips, gro- 
tesque tilt or vulgar swagger, can ever replace that 
greatest power of charm. The spell of normal 
bodily freedom thus broken, the trussing of ribs, 
chest, shoulders, head, and arms, gives sad finish- 
ing touches to the work of destruction ; and there 
is no more possibility for such a human contrivance 
to walk finely, talk well, or move beautifully, than 
there is for paper flowers to grow in the sun, bend 
to the wind, give to the storm, and scatter 
fragrance. 

A cultured, well-poised body carried or held by 
the free, firm, elastic tread on the mobile ball of 

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COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

a well-directed foot will yield elegance of bearing, 
dignity of natural grace, and harmony of self- 
possession well worth developing. Nor is the 
body the only recipient of gain in this process of 
evolution. Appreciating the inevitable depend- 
ence of the strength, the equilibrium and sym- 
metry of every structure upon the adequacy and 
efficiency of that structure's relation to its base of 
support, it is easy to realize how seriously de- 
formed human feet endanger the strength of 
human health, the equilibrium of human thought, 
and the symmetry of human kindliness. A mo- 
ment's reminiscence of experiences with hurting 
feet, their prompt and unfailing effects of total dis- 
couragement, loss of interest, and reckless irrita- 
bility, should establish personal conviction of the 
force of relation between the condition and use 
of feet and the condition and use of the mind and 
spirit that they support. 

The practice of right walking and good carriage 

128 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

leads to perfecting other habits of ordinary service, 
such as the habit of running readily and safely, of 
unhurtful climbing, of easily going up and down 
stairs, of the unstrained lifting and holding of 
children, and of such well-ordered sitting and 
rising as shall always yield reactive refresh- 
ment. 

So soon as instinctive habits of poise and order 
of motion are reliably established, throwing of 
"medicine balls," weighing from one to five 
pounds, is one of the most beautiful gymnastics 
for exercising balance and control of motion. In 
throwing from different starting points and in 
different ways, all the muscles of the body may 
be stretched and strengthened. The body should 
never rest nor move out of poise, nor out of com- 
prehensive successive order. No gymnastic better 
correlates accuracy of aim with forceful, orderly ? 
economic co-ordination of action from eye to feet 
and from feet to finger-tips. For quickening 

9 129 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

co-ordination, hand-ball is a gymnastic of most in- 
teresting value. But any ball-playing becomes 
wasteful demoralization when used in disregard 
or violation of highest motional law. 

Habit of instinctive recuperative relaxation from 
any point of exertion is an important element in 
every step of exercise. It is a practical insurance 
against over-strain, confusion, and defeat. 

Then there are habits of social grace to be con- 
sidered ; habits of so extending a hand to proffer 
or receive a courtesy, that it carries with it clear 
and full expression of appreciation, sincerity, and 
kindliness; habits of bowing, — to friends, to 
authority, to ceremony, or to greatness, — with 
definite and easy command of appropriate meas, 
ure and degree, whether of courteous recognition, 
courteous acknowledgment, courteous conformity, 
or courteous reverence. There are habits of dance, 
too, that express real beauty with true ease and 
genuine joyousness. 

130 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

Closely related to this degree of motion culture 
belongs its parallel education of speech. 

The training progresses from breathing exercises, 
enunciation and articulation exercise in accurately 
shaping well-produced, well-placed, well-modulated 
tones into clear musical consonant and vowel 
sounds, and smoothly blending them into words 
and phrases, to the orderly practice of emphasis 
and inflection as they relate to the expression of 
word, phrase, and stanza ; using such literature as 
shall instil habits of interesting, pictorial, atmos- 
pheric, and inspiring conversation. 

The entire work of development thus far, 
throughout all its deviations, has had a perfectly 
coherent trend of inducing and establishing habits 
of harmonious blending of normal vigor, normal 
intelligence, and normal grace, in the fullest use 
of instinct and expression of motion and speech 
throughout the normal conduct of life. 

By such habits of natural economy, body, mind, 

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COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

and spirit may be kept normally attuned in their 
coactive relations to life. Their naturalness, bril- 
liancy, and charm that are looked for only in 
youth may be conserved, and age may yield so 
much richer and finer harmonies of personality, 
that growing old becomes joyful instead of dole- 
ful. Such premature decay as is now the sorry 
rule, marks ravages of wastefully discordant liv- 
ing, not of time, — time never worked so ruth- 
lessly, so cruelly, nor so unbeautifully. 

In the legitimate accord of human growth, 
human education, and human expression, life 
gains clearer meaning, firmer trend, and sweeter 
melody ; social intercourse becomes magnetic, and 
being expands,— not into uniform power nor 
average ability, but into individual genius, normal 
character, and general harmony. 

From the plane of practical affairs the work 
leads naturally and easily to mastering the oppor- 
tunities, requirements, and graces of expression in 

132 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

the arts. There should be no jar, no loss nor 
discord, in the transition from educated normal 
speech and conduct to variously adapted artistic 
expression, — to public reading and speaking, 
to acting, singing, painting, modelling, as well 
as to leading in society and in affairs, or to 
teaching. 

Motion culture seems to charm children from 
rudeness to gentleness, from weakness to health. 
Habits of unhappy awkwardness and violence, with 
their accompaniments of shrill, rough speech, are 
so soon forgotten that the marvel is that they ever 
existed. Children come quickly into their right- 
ful heritage of free, facile beauty of motion and 
growth, so soon as they are liberated from 
habits of harmful imitation and self-consciousness. 
Older people form new habits somewhat less 
quickly, but no less surely and efficiently. Any 
self-consciousness that may exist in the habitual 
motion of a child or an adult, after reasonable 

133 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

effort toward body culture, is proof that the work 
has not been well done. Through faulty direction 
or faulty execution, good motion has not become 
instinctive automatic second nature, and until it 
does, it has not realized its possibilities of 
culture. 

The inevitable influence of example upon chil- 
dren's habits makes it most important that parents 
and all teachers, of whatever subject, should know 
enough of body culture to be themselves well- 
possessed examples of personal harmony, well re- 
lated to life and to the subject they teach, with 
intelligent power for. wisely influencing the growth 
of the children committed to their care. Beyond 
the educated body's help to teachers and parents 
in meeting their great duties and responsibilities, 
motion culture means fundamental gain of pleas- 
ant profitable self-adjustment to individual work 
and to life in general, whatever the work or the 
surroundings may be. It leads safely and surely 

134 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

to all natural processes of normal expansion, poise, 
and personal success. 

The problem of reducing or increasing flesh is 
a most complicated one. Its solution by unduly 
sudden and violent measures is apt to cost too 
great depletion of vital energy and the beauty of 
well-nourished tissues. Its safest and most satis- 
factory solution is through a very gradual process 
of stimulation of energy, elimination of waste, 
economy of diet, reasonable exercise, and the 
final substitution of firm, sound muscle for flabby 
bulk. Any degree of size and weight that is 
necessary and useful may be carried with ease 
and elegance, if it be carried in fine poise and 
with good motion. 

Some salient points of improvement in advanced 
gymnastic training are : — 

1. Securing and forming the habit of constant 
oxygenation commensurate with exertion, by radi- 
cal training in breathing. 

135 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

2. Stimulating and aiding prompt and thorough 
elimination of waste by good breathing, internal 
and external use of water to stimulate and relieve 
the action of excretory organs and the skin. 

3. Learning to command and control instinctive, 
co-ordinate relaxation, as a damper upon individ- 
ual strain and stress. 

4. The including of diction, the use of the 
breath, tone production, culture of the vocal organs 
and habits of speech, as an essential part of 
bodily education. 

5. Respect for the natural successive order of 
motion. 

6. Respect for the natural time and rhythm of 
motion. 

7. Respect for fitness and beauty in shape, di- 
rection, or quality of motion. 

8. Recognition of the relation of force to the 
other qualities, time and shape, of motion. 

9. The developing of unimpaired harmony of 

136 



THE IDEAL GYMNASIUM 

co-ordination throughout all bodily motion and 
relation. 

10. The consideration of motion as a primary 
and persisting force of expression and education. 

Gymnastic art, — the art of educating normal 
instinct and normal habits of being and conduct, 
— if its training be thoroughly well done, neither 
gives nor leaves anything to be undone nor cast 
aside. 

The ideal gymnasium, in its work of general 
development towards normal personal balance, 
through the culture of instinct and expression, 
produces harmonious growth of strength, facility, 
and economy in normal living and learning and 
enjoying, proportinate to the instinctive right and 
craving of every normal human being. This re- 
sults in happier power than many years of ill- 
balanced special training can give, while at the 
same time it lays the best foundation for any 
desired specialization. 

137 



COMFORT AND EXERCISE 

The education of motion and speech is funda- 
mental art training, whose principles and methods 
are correlative to the principles and methods of 
true growth, with fullest usefulness and beauty, 
through all art and all life. 

Moonshine, Twilight Park, N. Y. 
August, 1900. 



138 



